Barbossa closes the door to his cabin and only then allows himself to crack a satisfied smirk. Let the men share the meager booty they had got. They don't need to know why they have just attacked a small Franciscan monastery on a sheltered little bay on the Northern coast of Cuba. And thanks to the good friars and their vineyards, they easily accepted the "explanation" that all major ports of the island were under heavy guard by the Spanish Navy.

With a sweep of his arm, Barbossa clears a space in the middle of the huge and always overcrowded table of the captain's cabin. Then he opens his coat and carefully, even delicately produces a small bundle wrapped in what looks remarkably like an altar cloth.

"See, Jack. You have the charts, and thus have the headstart on how to find the Fountain. But finding it and actually -getting- to it are different things entirely, aren't they...?"

His long, gnarly fingers stroke the cloth covering the small bundle, then unfold it to reveal a leather-bound book.

"You see, if you had happened to be a Spanish sailor, Jack, you would have heard a legend about a man who went in search of the Fountain of Youth. A man who instead found and claimed the Florida. A man called Juan Ponce de León."

He opens the book, revealing the same name written with a calligraphy a couple centuries old with ink that has turned to a faded sepia with time. A thin grin bares his yellow teeth. Up until this point, he hadn't been sure, but now he is. The tension changes into exultance, and Barbossa chuckles at himself.

"Can't go around talking to people what aren't there. Lest my crew start having weird thoughts about mutiny. Can't have that, now can I?"

though of course he speaks on because, let's face it, this man loves the sound of his own voice above almost anything else.

Carefully, he closes the small leather-bound book and looks towards the door of one of the cabin's many closets. It's been some time now. But he could use the quiet and time to do some reading...